Have you ever clipped out of reality and found yourself trapped in the endless, humming corridors of The Backrooms with an insatiable craving for ice cream or coffee? Good news: you might actually be able to get some.
The Backrooms—the 2019 internet horror phenomenon defined by its endless yellow-lit corridors and unsettling liminal spaces—has officially gotten the A24 film treatment. But as the eerie aesthetic hits global screens, Gen Z creators in China are giving the creepypasta a highly localized twist. Instead of abandoned office carpets and flickering fluorescent lights, China’s iteration of The Backrooms features something far more inescapable: Mixue (蜜雪冰城) and Luckin Coffee (瑞幸咖啡) storefronts.
Chinese netizens have fired up Photoshop and AI generators to reimagine the terrifying void as an empty, never-ending food court complete with mall stairwells, city bikes, and cigarette butts. And honestly? It’s painfully accurate. Driven by brutal pricing models—Mixue slings ice cream and bubble tea for under a dollar, while Luckin fuels the nation on a bottomless stream of app coupons—these two franchise giants have carpet-bombed virtually every street corner, mall, and transit hub in the country. They are omnipresent in waking life, so it only makes sense they’d infiltrate our digital nightmares, too.
It’s a hilarious commentary on the relentless expansion of China’s fast-beverage industry, tapping perfectly into internet culture. The real question is: if you find yourself wandering Level 0, can you still scan Alipay or WeChat Pay for your daily Americano with one bag of sugar? Let’s hope the Wi-Fi in the void holds up.
All images via Xiaohongshu.
